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July 2017

OPINION: Why does the media still portray James Comey as a hero? By Jonathan Turley

In one of my favorite Westerns, “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance,” Jimmy Stewart reveals to a reporter that he was not the man who killed villain Liberty Valance — a legend that transformed him from a perceived coward to an inspiration hero and resulted in his being elected U.S. senator and ambassador to Great Britain. The seasoned reporter listens to the whole story, but in the end says that he will not print it.

He states the rule simply as “[w]hen the legend becomes fact…print the legend.” In many ways, James Comey is the Jimmy Stewart of the media production of “The Man Who Shot Lying Trump.” From the outset, reporters and Democrats (who had been calling for Comey’s firing or questioning his judgment) declared him to be the man who fearlessly stood up to a president demanding loyalty pledges and discarding legal and ethical standards.

The problem with that narrative is not the criticism of the actions of President Trump, but the consistent efforts to ignore the equally troubling actions of former FBI Director Comey. Yet, if Trump was to be the irredeemable villain, Comey had to be the immaculate hero. The script glitch centered on three allegations — all of which were actively denied by legal experts. First, Comey leaked memos of his meetings with Trump. Second, those memos constituted government material. Third, the memos were likely classified on some level.

Yes, the memos were leaked.

As I previously wrote, various legal experts went on the air on CNN and other cable news programs to dismiss the allegation (that a few of us printed) that Comey “leaked” his now famous memos detailing meetings with the president. Experts declared that leaks by definition only involve classified information — a facially ridiculous position that was widely stated with complete authority. Whether someone is prosecuted for a leak is a different question but a leak is the release of nonpublic information, not just classified information. University of Pennsylvania Law Professor Claire Finkelstein, CNN Legal Analyst Michael Zeldin, Fordham Law Professor Jed Shugerman, and others dismissed the notion that such memos could be deemed “leaks.”

Comey was a leaker, and he leaked for the oldest of motivations in Washington: to protect himself and hurt his opponents. Comey knew he would be called before the Congress and that these memos would be demanded by both his own former investigators as well as congressional investigators. That could have happened in a matter of days but Comey decided to use a friend to leak the content of the memos to the media (after giving the memos to his friend). In doing so, Comey took control of the media narrative and was lionized by the media.

Recently, the Senate Homeland Security Committee released a majority report that correctly referenced the Comey “leaks.” The report detailed a massive increase in leaks against the Trump administration but highlighted the leak by Comey. What makes that reference most troubling is that Comey was the person with the responsibility to find the leakers in the Trump administration. Yet, after the president expressly asked him to find leakers, Comey became a leaker himself. Moreover, as FBI director, Comey showed no particular sympathy to leakers and his department advanced the most extreme definitions of what constituted FBI information.

Yes, the memos were government property.

When some of us noted that these memos clearly fell within the definition of FBI information and thus they were ostensibly government (not private) property, there was again a chorus of experts dismissing such allegations against Comey. Asha Rangappa, a former FBI special agent assured CNN that these constitute merely “personal recollections” and would not fall into the definition of government material. Others joined in on the theme that these were like a “personal diary” and thus entirely his private property. Obviously, removing FBI material would not be a reaffirming moment for the Beltway’s lone, lanky hero. But that is what he did.

ISRAEL IN AFRICA-The Israeli heart and mind just transformed the lives of 1 million Africans forever see note please

https://www.innoafrica.org/israel.html
For Israel African Lives Matter which is more than one can say for the so called “African-American Congressional Caucus” ….rsk
THE ISRAEL CONNECTION
From renewable energy to agriculture to IT and more, Israel is a leader in the global innovation sector. In Africa, these innovations have the power to save lives. With similar climates and natural resources, Israeli solar, water and agricultural technologies are a natural fit for African villages. Our mission is to share the knowledge and expertise developed in Israel with people and communities that need it.
ISRAELI IRRIGATION
Fighting hunger and promoting economic growth

Almost 50 years after the success of their first drip irrigation system, Netafim is still a world leader in growing more crops with less water. We bring their irrigation systems to rural communities, where people are dependent on agriculture for both food and income. Even in times of drought, Netafim technology helps farmers grow the crops they need to feed their families and to sell in local markets.
ISRAELI MONITORING
Tracking our systems from across the world

There’s one thing everyone wants to know about our projects: how do we know that they’re working? We use a custom designed remote monitoring system built by Israeli engineer Meir Yaacoby that collects data from our solar systems and sends that information to an online server that we can access from any computer, anywhere in the world. We know how much energy our projects are producing and consuming, we can predict problems before they start and we can protect the investments of our donors, keeping our systems strong and ensuring that they provide our communities with the energy they need and deserve.
ISRAELI COMPUTERS
Teaching technology in the villages

We just installed our first Israeli manufactured computer at Mngwangwa Primary School in Malawi. This ultra durable, compact, low-cost and energy efficient computer by Compulab is already offering students the opportunity to learn IT skills in their village, all powered by solar energy. With the success of this pilot, we’ll begin providing Compulab computers to all of our solar powered schools next year.
ISRAELI LOCKS
Preventing theft at minimal cost

Karnaf patented what might just be the simplest and most cost effective tool for theft prevention on the market. It’s a small metal device that locks the panels to one another and the roof, making them nearly impossible to steal without heavy machinery unlikely to be found in our rural communities. We haven’t had a single instance of theft since installing these locks. And the best part: each one is less than $20.

Most French think there are ‘too many foreigners,’ say ‘they don’t feel at home’ anymore – poll

According to an Ipsos survey, commissioned and published by Le Monde, 65 percent of French people believe that there are “too many foreigners” in France, while 60 percent say that they “don’t feel at home as they did before.”

Also, over 60 percent said that migrants “in France do not make the effort to integrate,” and 46 percent believe that integration isn’t a complicated process.

The percentages vary depending on the political views of the respondents, with 95 percent of far-right National Front supporters saying that there are too many foreigners in France. The figure for Republicans is 83 percent (up seven percent since last year), while the left-leaning Socialists’ figure is 46 percent.

Similarly, social divisions remain clear; 77 percent of laborers think that there are too many foreigners in France, compared with 46 percent of managers.

Islam also remains a hot topic for the French. Another Ipsos annual survey, ‘French Fractures 2017,’ indicated that 60 percent of the respondents believe Islam is incompatible “with the values of the French Republic.”

In another question, an overwhelming 78 percent of the French regard Islam as a religion “seeking to impose its way of life on others.”

About 46 percent said that “even if it is not its main message, Islam still contains within it the seeds of violence and intolerance.” The figure is five percent up from the previous year.

The surveys were conducted amid a state of high alert, following two years of jihadist attacks. In November 2015, 130 people were killed in Paris; in July 2016, 86 people died in a truck attack in Nice.

France has been engulfed by disputes over Islam – one particularly hot topic being burkinis, an Islamic piece of beachwear.

Last summer, it was forbidden for a while to swim in burkinis on French beaches, though the Supreme Court ruled the measure unconstitutional in August. This year, the row has been renewed. A few days ago, the mayor of Lorette in central France banned the full-body swimsuit from a new leisure park, despite a high court ruling the bans illegal last year. Also, an activist tried to arrange a burkini beach party during the Cannes Film Festival, and the city administration pulled the plug on the plan.

After Mosul: Iraq Faces Three Challenges by Amir Taheri

Last Thursday, Dressed in battle fatigues and adopting a martial tone, Iraq’s Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi entered the remains of the historic al-Nuri Mosque in Mosul to announce the end of ISIS.

“The return of al-Nuri Mosque and al-Hadba minaret to the fold of the nation marks the end of the Daesh state of falsehood,” Abadi asserted.

The prime minister took part in a number of photo-ops, including several with the famous al-Hadba (The Hunchback), the 850-year old minaret as background.

Al-Hadba looked like an apt symbol for Iraq today, a nation bent down by decades of tyranny and war.

Iraqi Army commanders and soldiers in Mosul, Iraq on June 23, 2017. (Photo by Martyn Aim/Getty Images)

The question is: will the “hunchback” straighten up its back? In other words, are the Iraqi leaders capable of offering their people a chance to build a better future?

“The liberation of Mosul will be a new birth for Iraq,” Vice President Ayad Allawi told us in conversation last April. “A pluralist, non-sectarian Iraq is possible. We must all work together to make it a reality.”

Abadi’s triumphal speech in Mosul contained no hint of future moves apart from continuing to hunt down ISIS fighters and, presumably, sleeping cells across Iraq and, perhaps, even beyond in Syria.

Abadi is right in telling Iraqis that though the false caliphate is over, the fight against ISIS isn’t. Many Iraqis wonder what ISIS might do?

Citing reports by Iraqi Intelligence, Allawi says that ISIS has already opened “a dialogue” with its original “mother”, Qaeda, about a possible merger or at least coordination at tactical operational levels.

That view is partly shared by US and British intelligence analysts who report “intense debates” within the global Jihadi movement regarding future strategy.

However, though a child of Qaeda in Iraq, ISIS developed its own strategy. Qaeda was not interested in control of territory and had learned to live under the protection of others, the Turabi-dominated government in Sudan in the early 1990s, the Taliban emirate in Afghanistan until 2001, and tribal chiefdoms in South Waziristan after that Qaeda focused its energies on fighting the “distant enemy” including with spectacular attacks on the United States.

In contrast, ISIS, cast itself as a state with a distinct territory, an economy, an army and an administration. ISIS was focused on “eliminating” the “near enemy” including non-Muslim minorities or “deviant Muslims” who had to be massacred. The attacks made in ISIS’ name in Europe and the United Sates were ad-hoc operations, often prompted by copycats and endorsed by ISIS after the fact.

A Month of Islam and Multiculturalism in Germany: June 2017 by Soeren Kern

A 10-year-old girl from a former republic of the Soviet Union was raped by an asylum seeker from Ghana, but police and the local government allegedly suppressed information about the crime for more than two weeks.

A student sexually assaulted an 11-year-old girl and punched another boy in the face, breaking his glasses. At least six other students have been beaten bloody. The school’s leadership has refused to discipline the child, apparently because of his migrant background, and instead has lashed out at the parents for demanding a safe environment for their children.

Police in Lübeck suspect that refugees are taking over illegal drug trade in the city.

June 1. A Syrian migrant was stabbed to death in Oldenburg by another Syrian because he was eating ice cream during Ramadan. The murder, which occurred in broad daylight in a busy pedestrian shopping area, was just the latest example of Islamic law, Sharia, being enforced on German streets.

June 2. Around one million non-Europeans living in Germany are now on welfare, an increase of 124% in just one year, according to new statistics from the Federal Employment Agency (Bundesagentur für Arbeit). The top welfare beneficiaries are from: Syria (509,696); Turkey (276,399); Iraq (110,529) and Afghanistan (65,443).

June 2. Police temporarily halted the annual Rock am Ring music festival in Nürburg because of a possible jihadist threat. Authorities asked the 90,000 visitors to leave the concert grounds in a “controlled and calm” manner. The move was based on “concrete leads which do not allow us to eliminate a possible terror threat,” the police said.

June 3. Bavarian Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann called on Germany’s BfV domestic intelligence agency to begin surveilling minors suspected of being involved with Islamist groups:

“I would strongly urge for the age limit for surveillance to be lowered throughout Germany. Minors have already committed serious acts of violence. Normally, the domestic intelligence agency in Bavaria would not place children under surveillance. But if there is concrete evidence that a 12-year-old is with an Islamist group, we have to be able to monitor them, too.”

June 4. Mostafa J., a 41-year-old asylum seeker from Afghanistan, stabbed to death a five-year-old Russian at a refugee shelter in Arnschwang. The Afghan, who had been arguing with the boy’s 47-year-old mother, was shot to death by police after a standoff. It later emerged that the man had a criminal history in Germany and should have been deported but was not. In October 2009, for example, a court in Munich sentenced Mostafa J. to six years in prison for arson. In July 2011, he received a deportation order, but in 2014 he fooled a judge into believing that he had converted to Christianity and would be killed if he were deported to Afghanistan.

June 5. A study conducted by the Hanns Seidel Foundation, a think tank affiliated with Bavaria’s Christian Social Union, found that half the asylum seekers in Bavaria subscribe to classic anti-Semitic views about Jewish power. Around 60% of Afghans, 53% of Iraqis and 52% of Syrians said Jews wield too much influence.

June 7. A 27-year-old migrant from Syria stabbed and killed a Red Cross mental health counselor in Saarbrücken. The attacker and the psychologist allegedly got into an argument during a therapy session at a counselling center for traumatized refugees.

June 9. A court in Cottbus sentenced a 32-year-old Chechen migrant named Rashid D. to 13 years in prison for slitting his wife’s throat and throwing her out of the second-floor window of their apartment. The couple’s five children now live in Chechnya with their grandparents. The man was charged with manslaughter rather than murder because, according to the court, the “honor killing” was done in the heat of passion: the man thought that his wife had been unfaithful.

Jim Acosta Leads CNN’s Breathless Crusade against the White House The White House correspondent has been obsessing over CNN’s feud with Trump rather than reporting on the administration. By Tiana Lowe

Jim Acosta, CNN’s White House correspondent, has been having a public meltdown regarding the president’s treatment of the media, and the Washington Post has noticed.

The Post’s media reporter, Paul Farhi, launched an inquiry into Acosta’s “grandstanding” in a piece in Sunday’s style section.

“Acosta’s remarks aren’t just blunt; they’re unusual. Reporters are supposed to report, not opine,” wrote Farhi. “Yet Acosta’s disdain has flowed openly, raising a question about how far a reporter — supposedly a neutral arbiter of facts, not a commenter on them — can and should go.”

While CNN host Brian Stelter’s 15-minute monologues moaning about Trump’s treatment of the press are run-of-the-mill for cable-news pundits, Acosta’s public displays of resistance in the White House press-briefing room break all precedent. Rather than press Sean Spicer or Sarah Huckabee Sanders on Trump’s agenda, Acosta has spent since roughly last February focusing on how the White House conducts its press briefing and how it treats CNN.

Acosta’s repeated badgering of Spicer to hold on-camera briefings creates clip-worthy scenes, which feel like a bold defense of journalism, even though, given the nature of White House press briefings, they do not actually matter much. Briefings say most about a president’s communications angle, and seeing as Trump seems not to have any clear communications strategy or message beyond his Twitter feed, the briefing has become little more than a charade.

That has not stopped Acosta from tweeting out photos of his socks at non-televised briefings (“I can’t show you a picture of Sean. So here is a look at some new socks I bought over the wknd”), changing his Twitter bio to “I believe in #realnews,” and lambasting an “erosion of our freedoms” at every possible television appearance.

Of course, CNN has been goading this inanity at every point of his performance, no doubt because this “feud” between CNN and the White House generates so many views. While Trump’s communications team has haplessly attempted to cling to #EnergyWeek and #InfrastructureWeek as the media cares only about Russia, CNN has sent its Supreme Court sketch artist to the briefings at which cameras are prohibited. After all, nothing stands more in the way of democracy than not knowing what color tie Sean Spicer chose on a given day.

But of course, if Acosta has legitimate concerns with Trump’s policy and politics, it makes sense that he would clamor for direct access. For the sake of fairness, let’s go through Acosta’s journalistic highlights since the ascent of Trump.

While the rest of CNN’s reporters were presumably licking their wounds and listening to some spoken-word poetry following Trump’s victory, Acosta broke out some of the network’s hardest-hitting reporting, booking reservations at the Michelin-starred Jean Georges restaurant to stalk the then-president-elect at dinner with Reince Priebus and rumored secretary of state candidate Mitt Romney. At least 20 feet away from the dinner, Acosta live-tweeted all sorts of juicy scoops, such as “Trump crossing his arms for a good while now as Romney smiles and speaks” and “Fresh marshmallows are prepared as Trump, Romney, and Priebus dine.” Acosta was promptly “#busted” — yes, that’s a direct quote from Acosta’s tweets — when Trump approached Acosta, but that didn’t stop him from reporting later that “Trump, Romney, and Priebus have moved on to dessert.”

Trump’s Anti-Cairo Speech In Warsaw, the president delivered the antithesis to the fallacious, appeasing lecture Obama preached to the Egyptians. By Victor Davis Hanson

Obama’s Cairo Address, June 4, 2009

About five months after the inauguration of Barack Obama, the president gave a strange address in Cairo. The speech was apparently designed to win over the Muslim world and set Obama apart from the supposed Western chauvinism of the prior and much caricatured George W. Bush administration.

Obama started off by framing past and present tensions between Muslims and the West largely in the context of explicit and implied Western culpability: past European colonialism, and the moral equivalence of the Cold War and disruptive Westernize globalization.

In a pattern that would become all too familiar in the next seven years, Obama reviewed his own familial Muslim pedigree. This was his attempt to persuade Islam that a president of the United States, no less, now uniquely stood astride the East–West divide with a proverbial foot in both America and the Middle East.

Obama nobly lied that Islam had been “paving the way” for the West’s Renaissance and Enlightenment (neither claim was remotely true). Equally fallacious was Obama’s additional yarn that Muslim Cordoba was a paragon of religious tolerance during the Spanish Inquisition (it had been liberated by the Reconquista Christian forces nearly 250 years before the beginning of the Inquisition, and by 1478 few Muslims were left in the city). The message — its veracity was irrelevant — was that a humble and multicultural Barack Hussein Obama alone had the historical insight and cultural background and authenticity that would allow him to serve as a bridge to peace between two morally equivalent rivals.

Obama then rattled off a series of relativist, on-the-one-hand and on-the-other-hand, split-the-difference remedies to the current tensions with radical Islamism (all couched in vague euphemisms). The proposition was that the West should accept blame, and so should the sometimes culpable Islamic world. Only then would good compromises follow — given the assumption that conflict always arises out of ignorance and misunderstanding rather than that the guiltier side of a dispute knows precisely why it has chosen an aggressive and hostile path.

Seven years later, Obama’s outreach and his successive lengthy recitals of all the bad things America has done in the world and all the good America has done to encourage and placate Muslims (including redirecting NASA to the agenda of Muslim outreach) had come to nothing.

Indeed, the years of Obama’s presidency saw a sharp uptick in jihadists attacks against Europe and the United States, the rise of ISIS in Iraq, the genocide in Syria, and a series of appeasing gestures that spiked tensions, from the false red line in Syria to the bombing of and skedaddle from Libya to the disastrous and deliberate laxity in diplomatic security that culminated in the tragedy in Benghazi. Obama left office having alienated the moderate Sunni Arab nations, appeased an anti-Western Iran, and abdicated American power in the Middle East. Calm did not follow. For Middle Easterners, the Obama era meant that the United States was a lousy friend and a harmless foe, the common denominator being that one could ignore the pretensions of such a naive rhetorician.

A realist might have asked Obama, “If the president of the United State did not believe in the singularity of his nation, then why in the world would foreigners?” And if the nominal head of the West contextualized his culture when abroad, then why wouldn’t its autocratic enemies see that concession as weakness to be exploited rather than magnanimity to be reciprocated?

Rafe Champion : Wrongly Reported 97% of the Time

The methodology of John Cook’s infamous paper purporting to demonstrate global warming must be real because almost all scientists believe in it has long since been demolished. But there is another flaw hitherto overlooked: the extent to which humans are thought responsible.

The Cook et al paper ‘Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature’ has been the top-ranking paper in terms of press citations, with Barack Obama using it to justify his efforts in Paris to lead the world in the war on CO2.

A typical press report on the study, reproduced in full below, advises in the first paragraph that ninety-seven percent of scientists say global warming is mainly man-made and the study found an overwhelming view among scientists that “human activity, led by the use of fossil fuels”, was the main cause of rising temperatures in recent decades. That looks like strong support for action on fossil fuels, but what does the paper itself tell us? Does it tell us anything more than that there is an overwhelming consensus on a human contribution to warming? Is that exciting news? Can you find anyone among the so-called deniers who denies that there has been warming since the industrial revolution? Do any of the “deniers” dispute a human contribution, if only in the heat-island effect of cities and towns?

What does the paper tell us about the agreement on amount of warming, the need to be alarmed about warming, the size of the human contribution and the role of CO2? As far as I can see, after reading the paper several times:

The consensus in the paper does not refer to any particular amount of warming.
There is nothing about a need to be alarmed.
There is agreement that humans have contributed, but there is nothing about how much humans have contributed.
There is no mention of the contribution of CO2.

I will not dwell on the way the Cook study was conducted, other than to note the method has been subjected to a great deal of criticism. Rather, my focus is on the published results and what they say, and do not say, about questions which matter if you have concerns about the trillions of dollars being sunk around the world in the suppression of CO2 emissions.

Turning to the paper, it is clear from the way the paper is organized that they wanted to say

x% of scientists believe in warming
y% think humans contribute and
z% consider that human activity is the major driver.

They got what they wanted for x and y, namely 97+%, but z is missing. Of course the authors obtained a value because Table 1 shows how the data were classified to find it. However it is not in the paper. It is possible that the number is small to sustain the case for alarm about CO2. The research was clearly designed to provide a number for three levels of endorsement of the consensus.

First “explicit endorsement (of humans as the primary cause of recent warming) with quantification”.
Second “explicit endorsement without quantification”.
Third “implicit endorsement”.

In the results (Table 2) the three categories are collapsed into one. Presumably if a significant number had turned up in the category which identified humans as the primary cause of warming it would have been reported because it is the figure that matters when you consider whether there is any need to address CO2 emissions. So the three levels of endorsement are collapsed into a figure of 97.1 for those who endorsed the “scientific consensus”.

It is clear from the way the authors talk that, for them, the consensus is not just warming but alarming warming with humans as the major cause. But that is not the consensus revealed in their own figures.

The results support (1) the proposition that there has been warming which is not in dispute and (2) the proposition that human activity makes a contribution, which by itself is hardly controversial. The paper makes no apparent contribution to the key issues, namely the amount of warming, whether we need to worry about it, how much humans contribute and, most important, the role of CO2.

A Terrorist and Naturalization Fraud Why federal prosecutors failed to indict a terrorist for a serious crime. Michael Cutler

On June 29, 2017 the Department of Justice issued a press releases, Ohio Man Pleads Guilty to Providing Material Support to Terrorists.

Numerous politicians have proposed legislation that would strip an American of his/her citizenship if that American attended terror training overseas or fought on the side of terrorist organizations. This is entirely understandable and other countries have proposed similar laws be enacted.

Incredibly, in this case, this terrorist could have easily been stripped of his citizenship because he apparently acquired it by committing fraud in his naturalization application.

Yet, inexplicably, the federal prosecutors in this case failed to indict him for this crime even as they successfully charged him with other crimes relating to terrorism, for which he pleaded guilty. Adding this crime to his charges would have been a simple matter, indeed.

The “Ohio Man” was Abdirahman Sheik Mohamud a native of Somalia who, according to the information filed by federal prosecutors, entered the United States at the age of two.

The DOJ press release began with these two paragraphs:

Court records unsealed today reveal that Abdirahman Sheik Mohamud, 25, of Columbus, Ohio, pleaded guilty to all counts alleged against him regarding a terrorist plot.

A federal grand jury charged Mohamud in April 2015 with one count of attempting to provide and providing material support to terrorists, one count of attempting to provide and providing material support to a designated foreign terrorist organization – namely, al-Nusrah Front – and one count of making false statements to the FBI involving international terrorism in an indictment returned in Columbus. Mohamud pleaded guilty before U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth Preston Deavers on Aug. 14, 2015, and the plea was sealed because of an ongoing investigation.

Allen/Bauman Peace Plan Dangerous For Israel Putting one’s security in the hands of foreign forces. Morton A. Klein and Daniel Mandel

President Donald Trump entered the White House committed to finding “the ultimate deal” to bring about an Israeli/Palestinian Arab peace. Though putting himself on record in February as favoring no particular type of solution other than one that commends itself to both sides, President Trump’s advisers are now reportedly examining a plan for a Palestinian state.

The plan, devised by General John Allen during the Obama Administration, calls for a sovereign but demilitarized Palestinian state to be established within the 1949 armistice lines. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) would be withdrawn from within its territory, including the strategically vital Jordan Valley –– something Yitzhak Rabin, weeks before his murder, insisted on Israel retaining under any peace agreement. Instead, Israel would have to rely for its security upon a US military force operating in the Jordan Valley and, perhaps a continuing IDF presence for a 10-15 year period.

Colonel Kris Bauman, who assisted General Allen in the formulation of the original plan, is now serving as adviser to Trump’s National Security Council –– an indication of the seriousness with which the Plan is being considered.

Is the Allen Plan a good one? Unfortunately not, for several reasons.

Reliance on foreign forces holds a cautionary history for Israel.

The United Nations Emergency Force (UNEF), which was designed to keep the peace between Egypt and Israel after the 1956 Suez War, was simply withdrawn at Egypt’s request in 1967, leading to the Six Day War.

President Eisenhower’s 1957 military guarantee to Israel of free, unmolested maritime shipping through the Straits of Tiran turned out to be unenforceable when Israel needed the US to provide it in 1967 –– another factor that produced the Six Day War.

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) never prevented the PLO or, later, Hizballah from attacking Israel and has actually become a hindrance to Israel stopping Hizballah militarizing the Lebanese-Israeli border, resulting in several wars.

With the emergence in the last two years of jihadist groups on the armistice lines with Israel on the Golan Heights, the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) has similarly ceased to provide any form of protection for Israel or accountability from its attackers. International forces and guarantees can vanish overnight.